Up to 50 libraries to participate in year-long public innovation training

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CHICAGO - Continuing the collaboration between The Harwood Institute and the American Library Association on The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities Initiative, a three-day Harwood Institute Public Innovators Lab designed especially for libraries kicks off a year of coaching and webinar support. The three-day immersion in the Harwood practice, Oct. 28-30, 2013, at the District of Columbia Public Library Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, will be followed by one year of scheduled coaching support for library teams with a Harwood certified coach, plus six live webinars to support and reinforce the learning from the Lab. Up to 50 libraries may participate in this year-long learning opportunity.

The Harwood Public Innovators Lab grounds participants in turning outward and results in authentically engaging communities in real and lasting change. Librarians and key library stakeholders in libraries of all types — public, academic, school and special libraries — are encouraged to register. Participants will learn how to:

achieve community impact and accelerate strategic organizational change through community conversations;

authentically engage with the community to deeply understand them and make more informed choices;

leverage their resources in a way that creates impact on a specific issue while building the conditions for change;

reorient themselves toward the public and create new opportunities for community impact;

align mission, resources and strategies to the community’s capacity so that efforts at community changes will have a greater chance of succeeding.